15 Million Dead from Covid-19: Daily Brief

The World Health Organization just announced that nearly 15 million people have died either directly or indirectly from Covid-19 in the past two years, and that is probably an underestimate. Widespread policy failures are prolonging the pandemic and exacerbating its effects, and thousands of people continue to die from Covid-19 daily, while billions who lack access to treatments and vaccines remain especially at risk of severe illness and death. Three years into the pandemic, some wealthy-country governments and pharmaceutical companies continue to undermine rapid and equitable access to affordable Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutic drugs, and tests. Stronger action is needed, because ignoring the pandemic will not end it.

For two months, migrants and asylum seekers have been locked up in a detention center in Mykolaiv on the edge of the front lines in southern Ukraine. They are terrified and in danger, and whatever the original basis for detaining them, their continued detention is arbitrary and places them at risk of harm from military hostilities. Ukrainian authorities should urgently evacuate people from detention centers in Zhuravychi and Mykolaiv before these centers are also targeted in an attack. The European Union needs to play a key part in facilitating the release and safe passage of people that Ukraine has detained based, in part, on agreements and financial support from the EU. 

There is more news of atrocities in the war in Ukraine, as Amnesty International has today published a briefing underlining a series of war crimes committed in the region northwest of Kyiv. Amnesty has documented unlawful Russian air strikes on Borodyanka, and extrajudicial executions by Russian forces in other towns and villages, including Bucha, Andriivka, Zdvyzhivka and Vorzel. The organization supports the survivors' demands for justice, and calls on the Ukrainian authorities, the International Criminal Court and others to ensure evidence is preserved that could support future war crime prosecutions. This research adds to previous Amnesty reports and to Human Rights Watch's reports on violations of international law during the war, including Russian military attacks against civilians, for which war crimes prosecution will be crucial. 

There have been multiple and widespread reports of serious abuses and shortcomings of the European Union border guard agency, Frontex, all leading to the resignation of Frontex's Director, Fabrice Leggeri, last week. Joint media investigations coordinated by Lighthouse Reports revealed that Frontex may have been complicit in human rights violations and pushbacks at the Greek-Turkish maritime border, and, in April, Human Rights Watch published a report on these abuses, including accounts on Frontex guards utterly failing to ensure that migrants apprehended by Greek border police would be treated humanely. Leggeri resignation should now mean more than just a change at the top; going forward, Frontex and its new leadership should put human rights at the heart of its operations.

Costa Rica has passed a new bill on mental health that derives from on an old mental health treatment paradigm, based on medication and nonconsensual inpatient treatment. This approach has proved ineffective around the globe, as pointed out by many different stakeholders, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Mental health policies across the world are moving away from the outdated biomedical model, and the UN Committee advised that Costa Rica review its mental health policies. There needs to be a shift toward a human rights-based model instead, which would include informed consent. Costa Rica should start by revising this worrisome legislation.

For three years, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and Syrian students have not been able to go to school, despite international donors giving more than $1.12 billion for education programs in Lebanon over the last five years. Indeed, since October 2019, schools have been largely closed following protests against government corruption, the Beirut port explosion, the Covid-19 pandemic, rising xenophobia, and teachers’ strikes. This results in a staggering 80 percent of Syrian girls and women aged 15-24 not receiving any form of education, training, or employment.  In the schools, “there is no electricity, there is no internet, there is no money,” one principal said. At the annual humanitarian conference for Syria and countries hosting Syrian refugees, gathering in Brussels next week, donors should press Lebanon to change policies that prevent aid from reaching schools and students. It's time to stop this worsening education disaster, and with Lebanon’s economic collapse, foreign funding for education is more important than ever.